Choosing a web developer or a freelance designer for your website is one of the most, perhaps THE most important decisions you will make when you’re building a website.
You can take your time while choosing the person, but once you have chosen, you will have to deal with him, and his skills will have a direct impact on your business.
A web developer for a website is like an engineer for a bridge. His expertise decides the fate of the project. That is why this decision must be well made and the designer must be competent.
What can go wrong:
When you decide to hire a web designer for your project, hiring the wrong one can prove to be fatal for your website later on. An unmotivated or incompetent designer will make some costly mistakes that could have been avoided if the right person was hired.
In this article, we will shed light on some very common but costly mistakes that your freelance web designer is making that are most likely affecting your website and your business.
Following are some of the most common, but costly mistakes that your freelance web designer is making.
Neglecting Mobile friendly versions
One of the most common mistakes that web designers and website owners make is not having a mobile-friendly version of the website. A website is the face of a business, and around 40% of the legitimate traffic on any website today comes from mobile devices.
Understand why a mobile website is crucial for your business.
Ignoring such traffic is not only stupid but one of the most dangerous mistakes small businesses make.
While business or website owners might not know about the technicalities of web pages, professional web designers must know, and if the web designer is not competent enough, he will fall into these common pitfalls and making mistakes like this turns out to be costly.
Not using the correct type of hosting / Cheap or shared hosting services
To understand what the right kind of hosting is, first we need to understand what a hosting service is
Hosting service:
A hosting service provides data storage space where a website lives and is maintained. This data is stored in the hardware called web servers. On these servers, websites and their data are stored.
Now a hosting server is a lot more than just data storage space. While their primary job is to store the data, the kind of hosting service a website or a web page is using determines how the users are accessing the website.
Explore different types of web hosting and their impacts
Kinds of hosting:
There are majorly three kinds of hosting that are “Dedicated hosting”, “Cloud Hosting” and “Shared Hosting.”. Various factors must be considered when choosing what kind of hosting your website needs.
A web designer must be able to understand the process and he must know what type of hosting is best for the website and for the business.
But one thing, one must always steer clear of, are cheap hosting services. Such hosting plans are a recipe for disaster and are the cause of problems like broken links, broken pages, slow speed, site going down frequently, lost data, etc. Using unvetted third-party themes is also a big no-no.
Your web designer must know what kind of hosting is best for your website.
Not tracking the Conversions
While running a website for a business, one of the most costly mistakes a web designer can make is not tracking the conversions through the website.
This means that how many potential clients are being converted into clients that spent money. Doesn’t matter how much a website is well written, if you are not tracking the conversions, what’s the point?
Learn about effective ways to measure your brand awareness and conversions
This can be done using the conversion tracking google analytics tool. Putting calls to action on a website helps you in tracking these conversions. Google Analytics or other tools like that track how much of your potential clients are converted into real clients, subscribers, or leads.
The primary goal of a business is to make money and have a higher click-through rate. Losing all that juice by not tracking these conversions is a costly mistake.
SSL Certificate:
An SSL Certificate is a digital certificate that authenticates your website as secure and enables an encrypted connection with the server. Not having this certificate will warn the users that this site is not secure, which results in reduced web traffic.
Find out more about SSL certificates and web security
Ignoring Google Search Console
Ignoring google search console is one of the biggest mistakes your web designer can make.
Discover how to leverage Google Search Console for your website
What is google search console? Google search console is a tool that basically allows you to monitor the optimization of your website. The loading speed of your web pages, technical issues, web pages that need HTML improvements, keywords and meta descriptions, a good title tag and hacking, and other security gaps, google search console analyzes and suggests all of these things.
Not setting the Preference for Site Version
The preference for the site version must be set from the start. What version of the site will you be most focused on?
Are you focusing on mobile usability? Do you want to focus on one version, two versions, or multiple versions? Do you want a non-www version? How much are you willing to focus on the desktop version?
You need to have answers to all of these questions beforehand, and you and the designer should have very clear expectations about the project from each other.
Not having these answers and not having clear expectations is a costly mistake.
Read about future-proofing your website for different versions.
Not having a Google Analytics tag installed
Tags are simply small codes that help you measure the effectiveness of your website and ads. Not having a google analytics tag installed is one of the mistakes that your designer can make. These tags let you monitor the data from your pages and tell you how effective these said pages are.
Not having them installed is a mistake.
Having two different web pages:
Having more than one site for the same purpose is a mistake. It will not only confuse google and other search engines but will also confuse your visitors too. The traffic will be distributed among the two and google won’t know if it is the same page, google will consider it two different pages and will not give a positive ranking signal.
Clarity
The clarity of a website is important. Consider yourself as an example. You visit a website and the information isn’t there, or is difficult to find, or is very confusing.
If you don’t find the thing you’re looking for on a website in seconds, how long does it take before you leave the website and never go back? Exactly!
An unclear website is fatal for a business. If a client or a potential client visits your website and the site starts to throw all of the irrelevant information on his face and the thing he is actually looking for is nowhere to be found, he might never come back to your website or your business.
The web designer may use cute sayings, custom designs, stock photos, etc but if the message of your website is not clear, they are of no use to you or your client.
Absence of Call to action
The ultimate goal of the website of a business is the generation of leads or sales, or facilitating subscriptions. Consider as an example that all of the information is displayed on the website and the customer is satisfied enough to buy from you or subscribe to your services, email you something, ask you a query, or just wants to contact you before making a final decision, and he can’t find the call to action button for that, or the button is broken or has some issue with it. The customer will bounce from the site within seconds.
Web designers must understand that calls to action buttons are the ultimate goals, as they generate leads and sales and if there are missing, hidden, or broken and not working, it’s a deadly mistake.
Learn how to effectively connect with customers through your website
Excess of Calls to action
Similarly excess of these buttons is also bad. The people need clarity on your website and too many of these calls to action might lead to confusion and not clarity. An overstimulated mind will not be able to make a decision.
Using Copyright Images without Authorization
A website works very well when it’s decorated with relevant and informative images. Using stock images on a website is really a good move. But images on the internet are sometimes owned by someone and they can’t be used without permission or authorization from the owner.
Using such images without authorization might result in lawsuits that might cost you and your business a huge amount of money.
Using cute text instead of simple understandable and normal language
Using cute text and slang language might be good in some cases, but mostly this kind of language is not understandable by a large chunk of people. A website must have clear and simple language understandable by the masses.
Ignoring the quality of Content
The quality of content on a website is obviously essential and the web designer must pay attention to it.
Understand the impact of content quality on your website
–Thin Content
Thin content is content with no real value to the user. Pages with very little information, with irrelevant information, or doorway pages, are considered thin content by google
–No content
Having no relevant content is as bad as not having a website. The purpose of a website is clear content, so what’s the point of even having a website if there is no relevant content on it?
Ignoring the overall looks
In order to make a killer website, the website must be good-looking. The overall looks of a website must be eye-catching and attention-seeking. Attention to detail is a must.
After all, as they say, “The devil is in the details”
In order to avoid a lackluster website, the designers and the owners must put some effort into the looks of the website.
This can be done by keeping the following things in mind:
–Quality of images
The quality of the images that your designer is using must be as high as possible. They must look good and must be relevant. Must be of optimal size and overall enhance the face of the website.
–Optimizing the font size
Ever visited a website that had a very small or large font size? It bugs you right? The information on a website needs to be in ideal font size so that the users can feel at ease when reading it.
–White space
Ever visited a website that was full of text, images, and other stuff and had little or no white space? The visitor’s mind is overstimulated when he visits such a site and instead of being clear, the site becomes confusing.
The optimal amount of white space compliments the message that is being delivered. The designer must make sure that the visitor isn’t overstimulated.
Not having a written contract:
Not having a written contract with your designer can also prove to be a very costly mistake in the future for you!
Choosing the right web designer for your website:
How to choose the right designer for your site? What kind of red flags to look for in a designer? And how to make this important decision?
The two most important things when choosing a freelance designer are their experience and portfolio. These two things alone can tell you a lot about the freelance web designer you’re considering hiring.
Also, a few things that your web designer must not have are the following:
What kind of web designers to avoid when you’re hiring:
- The ones with a lack of vision and excitement for the project
- Designers who lack good communication
- Over-Promising web designers
- Bad Reputed people
- Incompetent Designers
So, In conclusion, choosing a freelance designer is a decision that you must take with the utmost care. Choosing the wrong one might prove to be fatal for the business and choosing the right one might be the turning point for it.
The search engines rank your website according to its optimization, and how well is it optimized depends on the freelance designer you hire.
Writing your page title, having your own IP address, designing a WordPress version, or a new version of the site, and running the paid search. The designer you choose will impact everything.
